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Track(s) taken from CDA68314

Magnificat

composer
Tawnie Olson (b1974)
author of text
Anonymous - liturgical
Magnificat: Luke 1: 46-55; Ave Maria: Antiphon for the Blessed Virgin Mary

Yale Schola Cantorum, Elm City Girls' Choir, David Hill (conductor), Rebecca Rosenbaum (conductor), Samantha Joy Foggle (soprano), Alev Sibel Yorulmaz (soprano), Emma Blair (alto), Sophia Cheng (alto), Simon Lee (tenor), James Reese (tenor)
Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
CD-Quality:
Studio Master:
Recording details: January 2018
St Thomas's Episcopal Church, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Produced by Andrew Walton
Engineered by Brian Losch
Release date: December 2019
Total duration: 8 minutes 31 seconds

Cover artwork: Angel and the Annunciation (from the series Annunciation, 2016). Joy Lions
Private Collection / Bridgeman Images
 

Reviews

‘[A] richly rewarding recording of choral works sung by Yale Schola Cantorum under David Hill’ (Gramophone)

‘Tawnie Olson's Magnificat immediately grabs attention with its pungent evocations of Bulgarian women's choirs, conveyed convincingly by Elm City Girls' Choir, which then combine and interleave with the Yale voices to reimagine medieval organum for the 21st century … David Hill's affecting God be in my head and Daniel Kellogg's high-spirited Shout joy! make an effective contrasting pair at the heart of this rewarding disc’ (BBC Music Magazine)» More
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING

‘Startlingly effective singing in the Bulgarian style from the Elm City Girls’ Choir teamed with Yale Schola Cantorum … superbly sung and recorded, and so’s the premiere of Roderick Williams’s A New England Symphony which comes after it, a moving choral meditation on texts born out of slavery, emigration and regeneration’ (BBC Record Review)

‘David Hill has devised a most interesting and varied programme for this CD and his highly accomplished choir sings it with tremendous skill. The recordings were made at a variety of time and locations yet the sound quality is consistently good. Hyperion have lived up to their usual standards in respect of the documentation with each composer providing a valuable note on his or her piece’ (MusicWeb International)» More
Our culture tends to devalue teenage girls’ strength, character and intelligence (the phrase ‘like a teenage girl’, for example, is seldom used as a compliment). Similarly, portrayals of Mary in art and music often downplay her courage and determination and instead emphasize her more ‘feminine’ qualities. This Magnificat offers a different view of Mary, and of young women.

This setting pairs the text of the Magnificat (sung here by the Elm City Girls’ Choir, in the style of a Bulgarian women’s chorus) with that of the Ave Maria (sung by Yale Schola Cantorum). The music draws connections between the two: for example, after the girls sing ‘enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes’, the adult choir responds with ‘Benedicta tu in mulieribus’. As the girls sing ‘Fecit potentiam in brachio suo: dispersit superbos mente cordis sui’, the adults sing ‘ora pro nobis peccatoribus’.

To Western European and North American ears, the sounds of Bulgarian women’s choruses tend to suggest female strength and determination. For that reason, and because the composer finds this music beautiful and powerful, the girls who sing Mary’s words are instructed to sing in that style.

from notes by Tawnie Olson © 2019

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